We should remember who Kim is and who his victims are

It is hard to quantify the crimes of Kim Jong-un, who last night was cheered when he lobbed up to a fancy drinking spot in Singapore, though the International Bar Association did its best in a report published last year.

Kim Jong-un tours the Esplanade in Singapore on Monday night.Credit:Bloomberg

The report said there was ample evidence that Kim and his henchmen had committed murder, extermination, enslavement, forcible transfer, imprisonment, torture, sexual violence, persecution, enforced disappearances and other inhumane acts. Which is to say, 10 of the 11 crimes against humanity enumerated by the treaty that created the International Criminal Court.

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The report found that since 1948 hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have died in a network of political prisons “that has no parallel in the world today”.

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Between 80,000 and 130,000 children, women and men are thought to be held in the gulags at present. The number is so high and the age range so broad due to the longstanding Kim family policy of eliminating the “seed” of three generations of “class enemies” when a person is suspected of a political crime.

Reading the details of life inside these camps outlined in the report is difficult. It includes details of rapes and mass executions, of children dying of malnutrition, of starving prisoners being shot when caught scavenging for food. It describes a rape victim being subjected to a forced abortion brought about by officers standing on a plank laid across her belly; of a newborn baby being fed to dogs by guards.

Many of those in this gulag archipelago have no prospect of release. Many of those marked for “re-education” will die first from torture, disease or malnutrition.

These obscenities are aside from Kim’s more colourful crimes, the ones designed for public and global consumption, such as the purges he instigated upon his ascension to power, the murder of his half brother in a crowded airport in Kuala Lumpur, the executions by anti-aircraft fire.

Even as we see the footage of Donald Trump shaking hands with Kim Jong-un we should not forget the kind of regime he leads.Credit:AP

Donald Trump may well succeed in his talks with Kim. History might judge the two men kindly for averting a catastrophic war, for formally ending the Korean War. They might fail too. We may not know for months or even years.

Either way while seeking to understand the Singapore summit we should remind ourselves that Kim was the first to benefit from it, and we should remember who Kim is.

Kim and his family have not only subjugated a people for 70 years, but in recent times he has pumped over 23 per cent of his starving nation’s GDP into his military, most of that into his pursuit of nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them across the seas.

For that expenditure he finally bought what he wanted most, a face-to-face meeting with an American president and the incalculable prestige that meeting confers upon him.

Robert Kelly, a professor in international relations at South Korea’s Pusan National University observed in a piece published by the Lowy Institute, North and South Korea are not only technically at war, they are locked in battle for legitimacy. Simply talking at this level with North Korea confers legitimacy upon it, and upon Kim’s regime, it lets the regime off the hook for its terrible crimes, and it potentially provides Kim with a smokescreen he can use to buy time to continue his weapons development program.

It might be that Kim really does want to come in from the cold, and that these talks will provide the true diplomatic breakthrough the world wants.

But as we see that footage of Kim's night tour of Singapore, of his handshake with Trump, we should remember who Kim is, or at least who his victims are.